Scoot McNairy is having a pretty good twelve months. The actor had a minor indie hit a few years back with “In Search Of A Midnight Kiss,” but it was his turn in last year’s lo-fi genre smash “Monsters” that really started to turn heads. The film was a big hit on the festival circuit last year, and McNairy was courted for a number of massive films, including “Prometheus” and “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” before taking something far more interesting: a lead role, opposite Brad Pitt, in Andrew Dominik‘s eagerly-anticipated crime flick “Cogan’s Trade.” Oh, and he managed to find time to marry “Monsters” co-star Whitney Able as well.
He’s all wrapped on “Cogan’s Trade,” and is meant to be shooting on indie “Eden” any day now, but he’s already booked another big Hollywood gig, as Variety reports that McNairy has joined the impressive ensemble cast of Ben Affleck‘s latest directorial outing, “Argo.” Affleck will also take the lead role in the film, a based-in-fact tale of a CIA agent who fakes a movie shoot in order to rescue a group of diplomats trapped in Tehran after the 1979 revolution.
Bryan Cranston, John Goodman and Alan Arkin are all on board as well, as, respectively, Affleck’s C.I.A boss, an Oscar-winning make-up artist, and an O.S.S. spy-turned-movie producer, and now McNairy’s joining them, in an unknown role. George Clooney and Grant Heslov are producing through their Smokehouse Pictures banner, and Warner Brothers will release it sometime in 2012 — things are shaping up neatly, particularly after Affleck really upped his game on “The Town,” so we’re certainly looking forward to this one.